Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2017 January 5 - 10 [POLITICS]

PM Abe’s diplomatic policy reaches deadlock

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has advocated a “globe-trotting diplomacy”, but his diplomatic policy failed dismally last year. The Abe government’s diplomacy is increasingly faltering this year.

Shortly after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election last November, PM Abe met with Trump in New York City and praised him as a “trustworthy leader”. After the meeting, however, Trump announced that his incoming government will leave the TPP free trade framework. The Abe administration, which had frantically pushed ahead with the TPP, was left high and dry by its “trustworthy” ally.

PM Abe is scheduled to visit Washington in late January to have a meeting with Trump. If the prime minister keeps flattering the new President, the Abe government may be forced to accept much heavier demands than in the past, such as paying for a significant increase in the cost of stationing the U.S. military in Japan, expansion of the dispatch of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces abroad, and greater access to the Japanese market.

The biggest failure of Abe’s diplomacy last year was the Japan-Russia summit meeting held in December which shelved the territorial dispute between the two countries.

In May 2016, PM Abe met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian resort city of Sochi. After the meeting, Abe boasted that he got a strong sense of creating a breakthrough in territorial negotiations using what he called a “new approach”.

However, just prior to his visit to Japan in December, President Putin said that “there is no territorial issue” between the two countries. At the summit meeting, without discussing the Northern Territories problem, the two leaders agreed to begin bilateral talks to conduct “joint economic activities” on the four disputed islands.

At the UN General Assembly last December, an epoch-making resolution to start international negotiations for a convention to ban all nuclear weapons in 2017 was adopted by an overwhelming majority. The government of Japan, the only A-bombed nation in the world, voted against the resolution. Although Tokyo is set to join in the coming negotiations, it maintains its position opposing such a treaty.

At the end of last year, Defense Minister Inada Tomomi visited the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, arousing the anger of other Asian countries, including China and South Korea. In the meantime, following the installation of a statue symbolizing those referred to as wartime “comfort women” in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Pusan, Tokyo recalled the ambassador to South Korea on January 6 as a reactionary “countermeasure”.

As Japan’s relations with its neighbors are deteriorating with its distorted perception of history, a trilateral summit between Japan, China, and South Korea is not yet in sight, which was expected to take place in February.

Past related article:
> Shii comments on Japan-Russia summit meeting [December 17, 2016]